At present, with the development of automatic control and network technologies, most factories employ a control system that integrates management and control. Such systems involve excessive data exchange and processing. Most factories are still using a conventional data acquisition method, whereby data on a field bus in the field needs to be connected to an external network through a dedicated gateway, and software/hardware service, for example, through a virtual private network (VPN) gateway and a VPN service, and then connected to an enterprise management and control apparatus through an enterprise firewall and an enterprise intranet. To ensure the security of the entire network, dedicated gateways and software/hardware services, an enterprise firewall, and matching operating system software need to be purchased in order to connect to remote devices, and to implement the collection and application of data of the industrial equipment. However, such devices and services are expensive, and need IT professionals to configure and install the dedicated gateways and software/hardware services and adjust the security policy. In addition, these dedicated gateways and software/hardware services require a complex configuration and installation process, and are difficult to adjust once the configuration is completed. Improper configuration may cause the entire factory network to be exposed to network attacks. If there are more than one factory, data from different factories will form isolated information islands using the conventional approach, leading to the problems of long development period, inflexible configuration, and poor scalability.